


searching for our saving grace

by peraltiaghoe



Series: peraltiago x black & white [2]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Episode: s04e01 Coral Palms, Episode: s04e02 Coral Palms Pt. 2, Episode: s04e03 Coral Palms Pt. 3, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Light Angst, Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:01:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25723270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peraltiaghoe/pseuds/peraltiaghoe
Summary: part two of my black & white collection one shots: saving grace!set in coral palms.tw: mention of use of prescription drugs! also ofc the coral palms shooting situation
Relationships: Jake Peralta & Amy Santiago, Jake Peralta/Amy Santiago
Series: peraltiago x black & white [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1733659
Comments: 7
Kudos: 63





	searching for our saving grace

**Author's Note:**

> Saving Grace by (obviously) the Maine. 
> 
> _I walk the tightrope,_   
>  _On my way home,_   
>  _You're my back bone,_   
>  _I know you're somewhere close behind me._
> 
> _All we have is what's left today,_   
>  _Hearts so pure in this broken place,_   
>  _'Cause we are, we are, we are,_   
>  _We are, we are, we are,_   
>  _Lovers lost in space,_   
>  _Searching for our saving grace._

The first month is hard. 

Well, all the months are hard. But the first month, objectively, feels the hardest. 

(In some ways, he’ll later reflect, the first month is actually the easiest. During the first month, he can remember her voice. During the first month, he can say things like _I saw Amy last week._ That sounds much better than _I saw Amy four months ago,_ which, unfortunately, is a thought he happens upon one day.)

In the moment, the first month is the hardest. Maybe whatever month he’s currently in is the one that feels the hardest in the moment. 

The first month is change. 

The first month is coming to terms with being ripped away from his life and thrown into _Florida,_ of all places. The first month is his girlfriend, whom he’d been spending most nights with, being torn out of his grasp, and out of his bed, and out of his life. The first month is losing his name, his job, his life, everything that made him _him_ , and becoming _Larry_. _Larry_ , who likes stupid things like ATVs and frosted tips and _Failure to Launch._

The first month feels like trying to find his footing on the edge of a mountain, but he just keeps slipping. He can’t gain traction, and he’s so far from the top, and every second, the weight on his shoulders feels heavier until he’s barely clinging to the stone by the tips of his fingers, awaiting the inevitable crash below him. 

The first month is finding the right balance between eating an obscene amount of burritos and drinking until his thoughts are jumbled and he doesn’t have to listen to them anymore, and going days without eating because he just doesn’t have an appetite and all he wants is Sal’s pizza and Amy. 

The first month is remembering. _Dwelling._

He remembers that look in her eyes, all the attention she adorned him with. He remembers her laugh, the way that it always made him feel like he was floating.   
The electricity in his fingertips that drew her closer, the scrape of the brick against his elbow where they were leaning against the building, just looking at each other. All their friends were still inside, but he was warm and fuzzy and so happy to just be standing in the cool air with her. Her smile—god, her smile. He had alcohol in his veins and a dizzy brain, but even when everything else was spinning, she was stable. 

Little things. The pause before they kissed that always felt so long. His eyes flickered across her face. She bit her lip. He licked his lips, and her eyes flicked down to watch, then promptly shot right back to his eyes. He took a step closer. She didn’t move. Her silky hair slipping through his fingers as he tangled them there, using his grip to tip her head back slightly. He remembers kisses like that, where they took what they wanted from each other, but he remembers the other ones, too. 

The slow ones. The careful, decisive ones. The ones where she woke him up in the middle of the night, all wrapped in blankets. Dark, and sweet, and intentional, and so, _so_ slow. He remembers the weight of her hand on his cheek, the depth in her eyes, and the breeze against his lips when she exhaled a quiet laugh. He remembers the taste of her favorite lip balm, the way he could smell the watermelon as soon as she uncapped it, the way she’d groan and roll her eyes when he’d kiss her just so he could taste it, too—but she never turned him away. 

He remembers her hair falling in her face, his hands carefully sweeping up to brush it away, holding it in place as she took him into her mouth. He remembers the way her lips slipped apart, her breath on his neck. That first month, he really remembers the sounds she makes for him, the way she says his name. He remembers the sting from her fingers digging into his shoulder, her teeth scraping across his throat, the tension between her eyebrows when she’s falling apart for him. He remembers how she _feels_ , that overwhelming satisfaction that makes his eyes slip shut while he’s holding onto her hips, guiding her, pressing deeper. 

He finds being horny and sad at the same time very confusing. He finds himself in a strange place, aching to simply be with her, then thinking about _being with her_. Even when it feels good, it feels bad. He’s never left feeling satisfied. When the desire melts away, he’s left with an empty, hollow place. Guilt settles deep in the pit of his stomach, twisting there with the emptiness. It eats away at him until he’s typing her number into his phone—but he knows he can’t call her. Being away from her sucks, but being murdered by Jimmy Figgis and never getting to see her again because he gave up his location in the form of a 3am _I miss you so fucking much_ text is undoubtedly worse. But he types in her phone number anyway. His thumb hovers over the send button, and a little shockwave of danger bottoms out his stomach. It’s the same feeling he used to get when he heard gunshots a short distance away on the job—and it’s the closest he comes to feeling alive the entire first month.. 

That first month is almost unbearable. His days and nights run together. Emotions hit him hard, and he’s never really been equipped to deal with them. It’s easier when Amy’s around. She always knows how to help. He tries to think about what she might say when he’s sad, but that just brings him back to the reality that she’s at home, and she’s _his_ home, but he’s in Florida. 

Captain Holt—sorry, _Greg_ —is worried about him, but he doesn’t want to talk. He just wants Amy. 

The second month is hope.

He’s eating more regularly—and a little more healthily. Healthy for him, at least. Amy would probably turn her nose up at his choices still, but it’s better than the beer-burrito-combo he’d been surviving on for the first month. 

He still misses her. He still thinks about her all the time. He’s still assaulted with memories—an image of her laughing, or the way she bites her lip when she gets that suggestive twinkle in her eye, or how she twists her hair around her fingers when she’s focused on a crossword puzzle. 

He still misses her, but now he’s doing something about it. 

He’s taking that void he’s been feeling and filling it up with the case. _The_ case. Their case. The only case. 

He’s slowly ( _so_ slowly) collecting evidence, and he’s tracing leads to the best of his limited ability, and he’s spending hours locked in that hot, stuffy storage unit, and he’s hopeful. If the FBI can’t figure this out, he’ll work on it. And he knows Amy’s working on it, too. And with her on his side, he knows it will just be a matter of time. 

While collecting evidence for his case, he remembers something. A few months earlier, they were facetiming at home. She’d just gotten home from some thing with her brothers, and he’d been busy helping his mom rearrange her living room for the third time that year. She was teasing him about how he probably didn’t even know how to use his email, a point which he _vehemently_ argued. 

“Remember that time? When I sent Holt a condolence email from ‘my stinky butt’? I know _exactly_ how to use my email.” 

“Clearly you _don’t_ know how to use it, or you would’ve changed your signature. Also, you would’ve been responding to my Very Important Case Update Emails on every case you’ve been my secondary on for the past two years.”

He snickered quietly. “I’m sorry to break it to you, but your Very Important Case Update Emails are boring, babe. That’s why I don’t reply, not because I _can’t.”_ He flashed a smile at her when she rolled her eyes. “And you should check your email.” 

Her eyebrows drew together for a second, then her image disappeared, the _paused_ symbol taking her place. A moment later, she scoffed. “Ha- _ha._ Very funny.” 

He’d screenshotted a picture of her and emailed it to her. What better way to prove that he knew how to use his email than to just… use it? 

That’s what brought him to the library (Amy’s going to be _so_ excited that he went to a library, he can’t wait to tell her all about it), what had him on a private browsing tab trying his hardest to remember his email password. All his passwords _used to_ be the same, but when Amy found out that he’d been using _pineapples81_ for all of his passwords since he started using the internet, she practically had a brain aneurysm right in front of him, so she helped him to change them all. 

After several tries, he finally manages to remember, then he’s scrolling and searching and scouring his email for the one thing that he knows will flood him with serotonin. 

_see? ur a nerd but ur cute as hell tho_

He’s moderately surprised at just how much he’s affected by seeing her. He hadn’t expected to get so emotional so quickly. A grin spread across his face the second the image loaded, and then there were tears springing in his eyes. _Amy._ God, he fucking misses her.

He remembers her arguing that he hadn’t even filled out the subject line, so he really only _half_ knows how to use it. He just shook his head and smiled at her until she finally narrowed her eyes at him. 

“What?” 

He shrugged one shoulder, leaning back on his bed and grinning at her. “I just missed you today.” He paused for a moment. “You should meet my mom sometime.” 

He didn’t know anything about missing her then. He misses her now. He also misses his mom. 

He prints one to keep in the house ( _not_ home. that place is _not_ his home.), and one to keep in the storage unit. The storage unit that he rented to, ya’know, completely break all the rules of witsec and work the case because feds are useless and he _has to get out of fucking Florida._ Out of Florida, and back to Amy. 

He knows it looks weird, but when he gets stuck on the case, sometimes he talks it out with her. He’s really just thinking out loud, but looking at Amy while he does it seems to always get the wheels turning. 

He hasn’t found Figgis yet, but he’s going to. He swears he’s going to. 

He’s taken to new coping methods. He finds himself in new places when things get particularly rough. He never stops hating Florida, but he gives himself an opportunity to explore. He’s searching, _searching_ , but he isn’t quite sure what for. For one redeeming factor, for things to tell Amy about when he sees her again, for a hint at a path back to her. The air is thicker here, but on the relatively cooler days, he thinks of her even more than usual. He finds himself on the edge of a pier, watching intently as the dark waves crest and crash. He thinks of the bench overlooking the Hudson. If he closes his eyes, he can almost feel her head leaning on his shoulder. He wonders if the Florida moonlight would shine on her the same way the New York moonlight always did. 

The third month is despair. 

He’s forgetting. 

He has dreams about her all the time. Usually, they make him feel better. He wakes up with a sort of renewed energy each time it happens. He can’t really see her, but he can dream about her, and she tells him she loves him, and even though it isn’t real, he wakes up with a smile on his face. 

Except that today, he dreams of Amy, then he rolls over to smile at her picture on his bedside table like he does every morning. 

His eyebrows furrow immediately as he looks at the picture because _no_.

No. 

She has a freckle on her chin. 

She has a freckle on her chin. He knows this. He’s looking right at it in the picture. 

But she didn’t have it in his dream. 

He knows, because they were lying in bed together. He had that soft smile on his face, and he’s sure he was as dazed as he’d normally be when he was lying in bed next to Amy Santiago wearing nothing but sheets, but he was looking right at her face. He was tracing the back of his fingers along her cheekbone, dragging his thumb along her jaw, just admiring her. He hadn’t done that enough when he had the chance, and he resolved to do it more when they were together again. 

Clearly he hadn’t done it enough. _Clearly,_ because the freckle wasn’t in his dream. 

He was forgetting. 

He realizes that he doesn’t really remember her voice anymore. 

He tries, but he just can’t quite remember. Sometimes he thinks he can hear _Peralta_ in her voice, the way she always used to say it when he would flirt with her, that mock-irritated tone, while she smiled or laughed at him. He can hear _Peralta_ , but he can’t hear _Jake._ He can’t hear _I love you._ He can’t hear _wake up, babe, we’re gonna be late._

It starts with forgetting the freckle on her chin, then her voice is fading, then what happens next? What happens when he can’t even hear his last name in her voice anymore? It’s been three months. _Three months._ That’s all it’s taken for him to start forgetting little pieces of her. 

Fuck his stupid fucking goldfish memory. He’s been clinging to the details. He _needs_ the details. He needs _her_. And he can’t have her, so all he has are these memories, these little memories that he never knew he was going to need to memorize. He’s going to memorize every little thing about her, he swears. If he sees her again—

_When._

_When_ he sees her again. 

He just woke up, and he’s already spiraling. This is what his bad days look like. Usually, he can tug a memory of her into his awareness and calm himself down. Now all he can think about is all the things he’s probably already forgotten. 

He knows the freckle on her left hip like it’s a part of him. She’s got that scar on her shoulder blade, evidence of the time David pushed her off the swingset when they were kids. She has a birthmark on the back of her knee, but he can’t remember what it’s shaped like. It might seem inconsequential, but it _matters_. Everything about her matters, and he can’t fucking remember. 

It’s like he went through a break up, but they never broke up. In fact, they were better than ever when all of this happened. There’s no closure, she’s just _gone_. It’s like—it’s like she _died_. There’s no trace of her. He isn’t even supposed to have the pictures that he printed. They’re trying to make it like she never existed at all, but she did. She _does_. Maybe not to Larry, but to Jake. She’s the most real thing that Jake ever had. 

_Has._

He keeps talking about her in past tense. 

She’s not gone. She’s home. And one day, he will be, too. 

But right now, all he has are these memories, and every day, they try harder to escape him.

He missed her birthday.

He’s told her happy birthday every year _since they met._ Ever since he realized she’d been trying to hide her birthday that first year, he’d made it a tradition to make a huge deal out of it. She always acted like it made her mad, but he caught the soft smiles she’d aim at him when she thought he wasn’t looking. 

This year, he doesn’t get to make a big deal out of her birthday. She turned 33, and he missed it. 

He’s probably going to miss the Halloween Heist. He’ll miss Thanksgiving. They were supposed to spend the holiday with her family. He hasn’t met her parents yet. He’s going to miss Christmas. His mom had been so excited to include Amy in her Hanukkah traditions this year.

He had been so excited to spend their first holidays together as a couple. They were _finally_ a couple. So much has been taken from them. 

He rolls over and buries his face in a pillow that doesn’t smell like her. It’s hard to breathe. His breaths are rough and ragged, and he doesn’t know how to make the burning in his throat go away. His eyes are stinging with tears that he doesn’t want to cry. He hates crying, because he’s alone—he’s _so alone_ —and everything hurts and he has one picture of her and no idea how she’s doing, and it isn’t enough. He’s in love with her, and this isn’t enough. 

And what if she’s feeling just as bad as he is? What if she’s forgetting him, too? What if she’s in her bed with choked sobs being wrenched from her throat, absorbed into a pillow that doesn’t smell like him? 

The thought that calms him down is a simple one. 

What if she’s in his bed? 

What if she’s wrapped up in _his_ blankets? She has a key to his place. What if she spends some nights there? Does she find comfort in being there, surrounded by his things? Does his bed still smell like him? Does she use his shampoo when she showers there, even though there’s a bottle of hers right next to his? 

He gives himself a few minutes to relax, to let his breathing return to a normal rate. He focuses on those thoughts, on Amy being comforted by him instead of feeling so utterly alone like he does. Then he drags himself out of bed. He needs a break from the case, so he decides to fall back on one of his early witsec routines. He’s already had three beers by the time he’s placed a Postmates burrito order. He stumbles into the back yard, sights set on the hot tub. Florida is hell, and it’s ninety-five degrees, and submerging himself in hot water makes him feel all around worse, yet that’s exactly what he’s going to do.

Before he can make it into the tub, Greg peers at him over the fence. 

“Larry?” 

Jake stares at the fence for a long moment before his gaze flickers up to meet Greg’s. 

“Are you okay?” 

And just like that, he isn’t okay. 

He’s the kind of broken that hot tub burritos can’t fix. This is the kind of pain that will stick with him, deep in his bones, for days. Even when his thoughts have returned to their usual, sarcastic, mock-optimism, the feeling will linger inside him, looming like a storm cloud that he just can’t shake. 

He opens his mouth to speak, then closes it again. He shakes his head, then turns to go back inside. He can’t remember if the tears started before he made it inside, or if Holt happened to see them. 

Two hours later, there’s a knock at his door. He’s not crying anymore. He has a nice little buzz going, but he isn’t quite at the point where his mind is blank, yet. His heart skips a beat at the sound of the knock. He isn’t stupid (or drunk) enough to think it could be Amy, but god, he wants it to be. 

He’s confused when he opens the door and nobody’s there. His eyebrows are already pulling together, ready to blame the ordeal on some neighborhood preteens, when he sees something on the porch step. 

It’s a DVD. 

Of fucking Failure to Launch. 

If this is Holt’s idea on how to make him laugh or something, it’s kind of fucked up. Fuck Florida, and fuck Jimmy Figgis, and fuck the FBI, and fuck the marshal, and fuck Greg, and fuck Larry, and _fuck_ Failure to Launch starring Sarah Jessica Parker, _not_ Kate Hudson.

It’s three hours later before he resolves to just watch the movie, because he’s actually not sure that he’s ever seen it before. 

When he opens the DVD case, tears spring in his eyes again. 

It’s Die Hard. 

Holt put a Die Hard DVD in a Failure to Launch case. 

Life is shitty, and he really, truly hates it here. 

But he’s not entirely alone. 

Month four is distraction. 

Any method of distraction, but mostly just the case. 

He isn’t really sleeping these days. Everything’s all blurring together. 

He still hates it here. He still misses Amy. He still wants to go home. It gets harder and harder, and when he’s sure that it can’t get any harder, it does. 

He doesn’t remember what her lips feel like on his, but he craves the feeling. He thinks about the times when he’d first gotten here. He remembers a time when he felt guilty about thinking about her in a sexual way when he was missing her so bad. He wishes those memories were so easily accessible to him now. They come in flashes when he least expects it. He’s falling asleep, and he remembers the time that she stepped into his apartment door and didn’t say a word to him, just started unbuttoning her shirt. He opened his mouth to speak, then hesitated, a breathless laugh escaping him as his eyes were drawn to the black, lacy bra that he now had a perfect view of. 

He doesn’t feel guilty anymore when he thinks about her in that way. He doesn’t feel especially empty afterwards anymore, either. In fact, it’s actually become one of the moments when he feels closest to her. He’s human. So is she, and she’s probably going through the same things at home. He wouldn’t want her to feel guilty for thinking about him in that way. In fact, he hopes she does. He hopes she saved that quick video that they jokingly took. He hopes she gets good use of it. That thought tips him over the edge. It’s the best orgasm he’s had in a while, and she’s the only thing on his mind.

He’s immediately flooded with memories. Sexy times are harder to come by in his mind now, but he’s been coming up with old memories lately that he was sure he’d completely forgotten. Amy running into his arms after the department store stick-up. He could practically feel her arms wrapping around his neck. The way she looked at him when she told him she loved him for the first time. The excited glimmer in her eyes when she found the picture of him with a nose piercing in his childhood bedroom. 

He’s ready for the comfort that he’d grown accustomed to after an orgasm. What he gets instead is an unwelcome thought. 

What if things aren’t easy when they see each other again? 

Things had always been so easy between them. Even when things were logistically confusing, it never felt difficult between them. But now, with all this… this _space…_ What would that do to them? 

What if they just didn’t work anymore? 

What if he’s been spending all this time waiting for the moment that he gets to see her, and things just don’t feel right at all when they finally _do_ see each other? 

He’s afraid. 

He can feel the anxiety building within him. He doesn’t have the energy to deal with it. He drags himself to the bathroom to get cleaned up, takes a couple melatonin—Holt left it for him when he’d mentioned to Greg that he hadn’t been sleeping much—and he buries his face in his pillow.

If he were being completely objective, he would say without a doubt that the fifth month is the worst one.

It doesn’t happen until almost the very end of month five, but it happens, and Jake is _pissed_. Holt—who he might just start calling Greg _unironically_ , because he’s being a giant dick—stole his Figgis file. 

He stole his Figgis file, and he’s being a giant dick, and he _won’t_ give it back. 

So, of course, Jake retaliates by making his life a living hell, which wasn’t actually that hard, considering they were already in Florida. 

And it _did_ make him a little happy to see Holt in a corndog costume (though he’s still a little disappointed that he didn’t get to hear him say _me so corny)_. 

Because, ya’know, he fucked up. He caused a scene, and he got them videotaped, and now Figgis is going to find them, and he should’ve just sent Amy one of those 3am _I miss you_ texts, because talking to her is worth way more to him than seeing Holt in a corndog costume. When he said he wanted to make his life hell, he didn’t mean _get Figgis to find and kill us_ hell. 

Things move pretty quickly from there. From the Fun Zone to the tattoo shop, to the way-too-open stranger’s house, back to the Fun Zone. From the satisfaction of Holt in a corndog costume to the panic of noticing the phone in the woman’s hand. From pure, unadulterated excitement of finding out that Holt has a tattoo, to the mild disgust at hearing the woman say she was out of data from all the porn she watched. From the relief at thinking his original plan had worked, to the slap in the face that came in the form of _the marshals will have to move us, and when they do, I’m going to demand that they move us to different cities, because I don’t want_ you _anywhere near me._

So. 

Turns out he _is_ completely alone. 

Also he _is_ going to call him Greg from now on. 

His memories of Amy feel farther than they ever have. There had been times since he’d come to Florida when Jake truly thought that he’d felt alone, but none of them felt even remotely like what he feels when he hears those words. 

Jake is alone. 

_No._

_Larry_ is alone. 

There is no Jake. 

Jake Peralta is a distant memory. Each day, that man and the life he lived feel more and more like a figment of his imagination. 

So he lets go. 

He accepts that this is his life now. He is Larry Sherbert. He feels nothing when he throws away his Die Hard DVD. He gets a real job at Dan’s World of ATVs. He makes the best of it. He stops thinking. He stops dwelling on what he doesn’t remember. 

He misses her. 

He always misses her, and even on the days when he’s fully submerged in Larry’s life, he never stops thinking about her. Some days he forgets about Jake. He feels like Jake never was, but he always remembers Amy. Little things get him on those days. The wind catches the palm trees just right, and it looks nothing like New York, but he’s suddenly transported to Atlantic Avenue, to holding her hand on their way to the bodega around the corner from his apartment. The wind blows her hair, and it rustles the leaves of the not-palm-trees, and it carries her laughter with it. 

He will make it home one day. She’s his way home. He knows it. 

The best of Larry Sherbert pales in comparison to even the worst of Jake Peralta. 

No matter what happened to Jake Peralta, he knew Amy. He loved her. And she loved him back. Amy Santiago did not know Larry Sherbert. 

She’s in the background of everything Larry does, and she doesn’t even know it. 

He will get out of this place. 

Month six is overwhelming. 

He’s reacquainted with Jake in a big way the day that Holt comes by Dan’s World of ATVs to apologize. 

As sure as he is that he’s going to go home to Amy one day, that paralyzing fear of _change_ , of them never being able to get back into a rhythm with each other, it looms closer. 

But he has to know. So when Holt suggests that they lure Figgis to them—that they control their fate, their future, their lives—Jake Peralta is game. Larry Sherbert sucked, and Jake will not miss him. 

If he’s being completely honest, once things really start moving, Amy’s on his mind a lot less than normal. 

Ya’know, between bribing the guy at the gun shop, getting arrested, Figgis kidnapping (is it still called kidnapping when it’s an adult?) the marshal, Holt punching him in the face, punching Holt in the face, kissing Holt, and like, totally blowing his mind with his grown up, mature, smart advice, Holt getting _disgustingly_ impaled on a metal pipe, then even more disgustingly cleaning and stitching the wound himself—plus, _c’mon,_ he’s obviously still thinking about Holt’s secret tattoo—he’s a little preoccupied. 

But she still breaks through all the madness, because, ya’know, of course she does. He’s thinking about her when he spends five of their seventeen dollars on a body spray called liquid moan, which, at the very least doesn’t have _New Jersey_ in the description. He’s thinking about her when he tells Holt that it’s okay to accept help from people who care about you. He’s thinking about Amy while Holt is stitching his wound. Thinking about, stressing about, worrying about—missing. Always missing. 

But she’s so close. They’re so close to getting through this. And maybe things will be weird. Maybe they have grown apart. But they can grow back together, right? 

He thinks about her a lot that night. He can’t sleep. He’s anxious, and he’s excited, and the adrenaline has not stopped flowing in hours. 

He’s all adrenaline as he creeps toward the door of the storage unit with Holt’s gooey, body pipe in his hand, and when Amy punches him directly in the throat, he’s filled with a not-that-confusing sense of both blinding pain and overwhelming love. 

She’s here. 

She’s here, she’s here, she’s here, _she’s here._

She’s here, and she’s exactly how he remembered her. She’s here, and Figgis is on the way, and it’s so serious, and he’s not distracted at all. 

_She’s here._

He doesn’t need anyone to pinch him, because Amy punched him in the throat, and yeah, she’s definitely here. 

God, she’s here. 

That’s approximately his only thought for three full minutes. 

Then he’s back into professional mode, and he’s explaining the plan, and Gina looks like a wizard, so that’s weird, and Charles is his same overbearing self, and god, he missed him more than he realized, but then he interrupts what was supposed to be his first kiss with Amy and… 

Really it’s all downhill from there. 

He was absolutely right. It wasn’t magical at all when he and Amy saw each other. It was a punch to the windpipe—literally. It’s awkward. It’s being unsure of how to move around one another. It’s being out of sync—something he hasn’t been with her in _years._ It’s an abrupt _should we have sex?_ A fumbled _yes, no, wait, what?_ A high-five turned forehead kiss, turned joke-not-joke about Figgis killing them before they had an opportunity to talk things through, turned a statement that if he heard it he would’ve thought came from Charles, not him: _Important to… get on them balls._

And then, to top it all off, he hits Amy in the face with a basketball, so. 

(can he pawn that move off on Larry???) 

Maybe it’s just the fact that he can’t remember the last time he was this nervous, or maybe it’s the fact that he’s still kind of in Larry-mode, getting reacquainted with Jake, but he’s learning a lot of things about nervous Jake. Like, for example, that he _continuously_ says the wrong thing at the wrong time. Why does he _keep_ talking about kissing Holt? Especially when he’s leaning in to kiss Amy?

And then Figgis is there. 

Figgis is there, and things aren’t normal between him and Amy, but there’s no going back. 

And things are going great! He has him— _he has him._

And then he doesn’t. 

The sheriff is slumped over on the ground and there’s blood, and he’s following Figgis to what is, presumably, his death. 

He thinks about her. 

He thinks about his future. He’s not sure exactly what it would look like, but he knows it would be full of her. She would be there every morning when he wakes up. 

He takes a deep, steadying breath, and his legs feel wobbly, but he forges ahead, his eyes on Figgis’s back. He’s trying to find a way out of this, but he has no weapon, and he’s walking further away from the squad, and he’s not sure there _is_ a way out. 

The first few weeks would be hard. He’d wake up every morning, frantic. Every morning, he’d think it had all been a dream. Six months in Florida had shown him dreams like that, but they’d never been real. He’d feel around for her, but she would always be there. She would always be real. He’d wrap an arm around her waist, and he’d hide his face in her neck, and he’d breathe her in. 

He glances behind him. He hopes to see someone from the squad, but all he sees is darkness and stupid palm trees. He idly wonders if Figgis would at least do him the honor of taking him to another state before he kills him. 

Florida fucking sucks. 

Eventually, he wouldn’t be filled with a sense of panic anymore. He would wake up, and instead of frantically reaching for her, he’d just shift to pull her closer. She would make that cute, sleepy sound she always used to make, and he’d smile, and they’d never have to be apart like this again. 

It would all just be a distant memory. 

He isn’t sure what their future would look like. He loves her. He knows that. He hasn’t told her since before Florida, but he thinks that she knows. 

He hopes. 

God, he hopes. 

He grits his teeth, and tears are burning behind his eyelids, but he’s _not_ about to cry in front of Jimmy Figgis. 

But god, he really wants to know what a future with Amy would hold. A thousand mornings wrapped in blankets, just as many nights full of laughter and love. A handful of nights that end with crossed arms and stiff silence, maybe. Way more than a handful, he was sure, of grumpy mornings. A ring, one day, maybe. Soft looks shared over cups of coffee, or across their desks, or between the driver’s seat and the passenger’s seat. Kisses. Soft ones, rough ones, slow ones, fast ones—he wants all of them. Anything she has to offer, he wants. And she could have anything she wanted from him. 

He wants her bad days, and any good days that she’ll share with him. He wants to spend his days doing literally anything with her. He’s spent so many days away. He wants to wake up to realize this had all just been a bad dream. 

He wants more time. 

He swallows, but his mouth is dry. He is left wanting. He will not get more time. He slows down. He’s a step behind Figgis. He isn’t sure what stopping will get him, but he’s sure that for the first time, there’s something in Florida he wants to stay for. He doesn’t want to take another step away from her. He doesn’t want to step out of this god forsaken state without her, and he sure as hell doesn’t want to die. He knows she’s somewhere close behind him. So he stops.

Figgis grabs him. He shoves him forward. 

“Keep walking.” 

He clenches his jaw. He hopes she’s okay. If he can’t be, at least she can. 

“Let him go.” 

She’s here. 

His breath leaves him in a shaky huff. Figgis has his arm around his neck. The muzzle of his gun brushes against his cheek. The metal is cold. His eyes are on hers. 

She’s scared. 

“Put that gun down or he dies.” 

She’s scared, but she’s strong. He’s scared, too. But he trusts her. 

“He’s not gonna shoot me. He needs me alive to get out of here.” 

“Yeah, you willing to take that bet? I wouldn’t. Now put the gun down.” 

His eyes are on hers. She looks back at him. Her shoulders are squared. He nods once. She raises her eyebrows. He nods once more, his eyebrows trying to convey what he’s thinking. 

He always knew she was his way home. 

The shot is a flash of pain like he’s never really felt before. A flash of pain, then nothing. He’s in shock. His ears are ringing. Figgis shoves him onto the ground, then Amy’s at his side, and he’s talking, but he doesn’t know what he’s saying. He’s babbling, talking through the pain—it hurts, god, it hurts—but he’s in awe of her. She’s running off to chase after Figgis, and she shot him, and it was awesome, and she’s amazing, and he’s alive, and fuck, it hurts. 

It’s weird. It’s strange how much more normal things feel once she shoots him. One day he’ll make the joke that she should just shoot him in the leg every time they have a fight, since it worked so well in Coral Palms. For now, he’s in the back of an ambulance, and EMT Craig is wrapping his gunshot wound, and as soon as they’re alone, he’s confessing to her how bad it hurts. He’s telling jokes, and she’s laughing, and he’s missed this smile every day for six months. She’s leaning closer, and Charles isn’t there to interrupt them, and it’s one of the soft kisses, and he doesn’t want it to end. 

It does end. Her eyes are warm on his, and he’s missed being on the other side of this gaze, and he can already feel six months of tension leaving him. 

“I love you.” 

“I love you, too.” 

And everything is right in his world. 

Everything except for the type of blood currently pumping into his arm, apparently. He’s not sure how he survived six months without her. He doesn’t ever want to have to do it again. 

Hours later, he’s in his room with her. 

He’s on the best painkillers he’s ever had in his life, and everything feels a little fuzzy around the edges, but he won’t take his eyes off of her. His eyes, his hands, his lips. He’s completely at her will—even with the painkillers, moving his leg is agony—but she was right about them being in sync again. 

She’s on his lap, and her hands are in his hair, and her tongue is in his mouth, and it doesn’t feel like it’s been six months since they’ve been together. He pulls back about every two minutes, his wandering hands stilling on her skin. He just looks at her—admires her, memorizes her. He smiles at her, and she shakes her head, but she can’t wipe the smile off her face. Their smiles melt away as their lips come together. 

They’re clumsy at first. She shifts her weight in his lap, and he moves to adjust and gasps at the pain in his leg. She shifts further away from him, and that shifts her weight closer to the gunshot wound, and he winces and pulls her closer to his body, away from his leg. Her breath hitches at the contact, but her eyebrows draw together. 

“Are you hurt?” 

He shakes his head, and he’s telling the truth. It was a brief, shooting pain, and then it was gone—but she’s not. His hands linger on the small of her back, dipping underneath the hem of her shirt. The feeling of his fingertips on her bare skin is addictive. He wants more. 

“I can’t believe you’re here.” 

She holds his face with both hands, her thumbs rubbing gently over the stubble along his jaw. “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.” 

He’s smiling at her, and it’s taking everything in him to not cry and ruin the moment. He still really, truly can’t believe that this is real—that she’s here, in the room, on his lap, in his arms. “That’s disgusting, babe. We’re in Florida.” 

“I love you,” she whispers, just a hint of a laugh infecting her words.

“I love you,” he whispers back, soft and pensive. 

There had been times over the past six months when he’d thought a lot about the types of kisses he was missing out on with her. He’d thought about those rough, rushed kisses a lot—about how he couldn’t wait to feel them again. 

These were not those kisses. She was taking her time with him. She was being careful with him, her hands gentle in every place that they brushed against his skin. She guides his shirt off of his shoulders, and she checks in with him, with her eyes and her words, and he affirms her before she even gets entire sentences out. He wants this, wants her, wants to be closer. 

She undresses him slowly, and it’s a sort of foreplay they’d never really experienced before. It’s rife with muffled laughter as they figure things out, become reacquainted with one another. Nothing about it is awkward, and he clings to every soft laugh that leaves her lips. 

He reclines back into the pillows as she takes her place on top of him, her touch so soft that he’s sure she thinks she might break him. He squeezes her hip gently, a silent plea, a nod of consent. His eyes remained locked on hers until he can’t physically keep them open anymore, his head tilting to the side, hands fidgeting on her waist. 

“Oh, god, Ames,” he whispers. 

He’d been nervous about what their first time together again would be like. All of his fears prove to be unwarranted. It’s soft, and it’s slow, and it’s careful, and it’s everything he could have hoped for. It’s better than any dream or memory he could have conjured, and holding her in his arms after is worth every terrible second he’d endured in Florida. He hopes he never has to be away from her like this again, but he would do it all again for her, for this, for the soft, sleepy smile gracing her lips as she looks up at him. 

She falls asleep in his arms. 

He holds her for a long time, watching the light from distant headlights through the thin curtains changing the shadows on her face. He plays with her hair, and he traces every feature on her face with his fingertips, careful to keep his touch light so as to not wake her. He’s already started the process of memorizing her. If he ever has to be away from her like this again—he _won’t_ ever have to be away from her like this again, he assures himself—he’s going to remember the placement of every little freckle, every eyelash, every curve and angle and plane on her body. 

His pain meds wear off before he falls asleep, but he doesn’t dare wake her. He hides his face in the crook of her neck, and he presses gentle kisses to her skin, and he pulls the blanket up higher. She makes that soft, sleepy sound when he shifts to pull her closer, and everything feels right for the first time in months. 

He’s overcome with emotion. He doesn’t even care that he’s in Florida, because he’s with her. Her rhythmic breath lulls him to sleep, and it’s the best sleep he’s had in months. 

When he wakes up in the morning, his muddled brain has trouble piecing things together. There’s a dull ache in his leg that he’s trying to come up with a reason for, and then the memories come flooding in. _Amy._ He feels around on the bed, and he’s alone, and he’s confused, and he’s afraid because _yeah_ his leg is on fire, and that clearly means something, but what if it was all a dream and she was never here at all? What if Figgis shot him, and he just made all that up in his desire to cope, to cling to life? It would make perfect sense that his mind would immediately jump to her, that he’d devise all these scenarios to try and convince himself to hold on. She’s been his biggest reason to hold on for all this time, after all. 

He turns his head to inspect the rest of the room—it’s his room, Larry’s room, and before he can finish that thought, he’s overwhelmed again. 

He vaguely registers the sound of the shower in through the wall, but he’s too distracted to really notice. He rolls over, completely ignoring the stabbing pain in his leg. He buries his face in his pillow, inhaling deeply and exhaling on an exasperated laugh. 

It smells like her.


End file.
